Internet Security

Attending or working at UW means you belong to their network, whether you like it or not. Everyone within the confines of that network is at stake of having their information stolen or exploited by outside parties, where it can be used for anything a hacker may deem fit.

According to Chief of Information Security Bob Turner, the data you generate using your campus I-D, such as with your Wiscmail, is information processed and protected by the university, yet sometimes shows a weakness to hackers and internet dangers.

On a campus that is so heavily data-driven, it is important to know how your information is being protected from people that are trying to take advantage of this learning institution.

“There’s always people trying to attack us, we record within the network about seventy thousand events per second,” Turner said. Higher education is targeted number one because we have so much data available and a lot of that data is information on students, healthcare information.”

Knowing the Internet dangers and the steps to take during an emergency is an important part to having good information security. DoIT Senior Consultant Justin Essert walked us through how to fix the a problem.

“The process there is, you come in to DoIT, we’ll usually have you watch a video depending on what exactly had happened,” Essert said. If you have illegal content on your computer we obviously have to get that off, and if you have a virus on your computer we’ll obviously help you out with that too. After that, we will often reset your password, and then after that we will basically send you on your way and you’re all good.”